In today's society, the Internet has become an important means of communication. The Internet is a network of interconnected computers that allow two computers to transmit data packets between one another to communicate and share information. Computers may be connected to other computers on the Internet by traditional analog telephone line connections, coaxial connections, T1 communications line, T3 line communications line, digital subscriber line service, or any other communications medium used to connect computer systems.
As the Internet has become a more popular form of communication, businesses desire to be connected to the Internet to provide services to customers and reach a broader market with advertising. In the past, businesses have used service provider servers to maintain websites for both advertising and providing service. Service provider servers are servers maintained by a third party that are permanently connected to the Internet to provide internet connections to users that connect to the service providers servers via traditional connections, such as a modem connection via a telephone line. America On-Line and CompuServe are examples of third parties that provide service provider servers.
Recently, the amount of e-commerce has been expanding at an exponential rate. Therefore, businesses desire to connect their own server to the Internet to provide services and advertisements to users of the Internet. However, a business must have a dedicated communications line to maintain connection to the Internet. A common type of dedicated line to the Internet is a T1 communications line. It is a problem that a typical T1 connection costs anywhere from five hundred dollars ($500) to fifteen hundred dollars ($1500). This is a substantial expense considering that a traditional Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) connection to an Internet provider can cost in the range of thirty dollars ($30) to one hundred and fifty dollars ($150).
The problem with a DSL connection is that the connection is not permanent. Typically, a business or other user uses the DSL line to connect to a service provider server that is a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server. A DHCP server is a server that establishes a connection with a computer system, such as a server for a business and assigns the computer system a temporary IP address. It is a problem that this temporary address for the computer system, such as a server for business, may take from three days to three weeks to propagate out to other servers for resolution of the IP address for the computer system. This amount of time is unacceptable for a business that wishes to maintain business over the Internet. Therefore, there is a need for a system that would allow a business to maintain a cheaper Internet connection, such as a DSL connection, while maintaining a constant connection to the Internet with a permanent or static IP address.